Andrei Fagurel - English

I learnt how to clap my hands and I’m having a lot of fun !

Otherwise, I lick every day a little food and try different tastes. A friend, the mother of a baby who also has esophageal atresia like me, told mommy she should continue with this, no matter how hard it seems in the beginning. It seems this is the only way for me to learn how to eat.

I don’t always want to bite, but yesterday, for instance, I fought with a slice of salami. I like it, I have to admit.

And I started liking to brush my teeth with a “real” toothbrush, that type for small children, not for babies. Well, I am a little older already, don’t you agree?

I listen to music for children all day long, I play and have fun. Occasionally, I make fun of mommy and daddy, especially when I see them very tired, and I don’t want to go to bed until 11 and a half in the night. Hi hi hi!

Rrrrrr! I watched mommy and daddy to see what they do when they eat. And I learnt something: you have to bite some pieces!

The problem is I still don’t know what to do after I bite, so I start making funny faces and trying to get the piece out of my mouth. Today, for instance, I ate mashed potatoes and steak. I can manage pretty well the mashed potatoes, but when I bit the piece of steak she gave me, she totally panicked. Don’t worry, we managed to solve the situation, the pieces were skillfully extracted in short time.

Bufli (The-Cheeky-One) got a new, smaller, lighter buggy, today, so thathe can go only with mommy to the hospital or Kinderzentrum appointments and so on.

It’s about time we don’t put daddy so much on the road between work and… playing the driver for us to take us to the lots of appointments we have. Because, I don’t know if I’ve told you before, Andrei is a very busy baby, he does a lot of physiotherapy, logopedy, check-ups… So, a little independence is needed, now that we got a little more used to how things work.

For some time, almost a month now, momy and daddy always give me to taste a little of what they eat. I think they noticed I am curious, when we were sitting together at the table in the kitchen and I saw them eating.

In the begining, I only tasted a little and it seemed really bad… But now, I actually started to like it :). For instance, today I ate together with mommy, “tortellini” with white cheese and sour cream sauce. Actually, I ate the sauce and mommy ate the pasta. I thought it was veeery good, I ate a lot and, when I was seeing that mommy doesn’t give also some to me, I would stretch towards her. And she understood and gave me a little with my spoon.

Today, I actually took the spoon to my mouth myself, which made mommy veery happy. Big deal!…

I also like, in order of prefference, chocolate and cream cookies, chocolate, lasagna, chicken soup, apple and bannana… And the list is always growing. And I am trying to take more and more, I actually started liking it. Because of my eating prefferences, mommy is making fun of me and calls me Garfield…

I proudly report 14 kilos and 82 cm! I am definitely growing!

And I also report 4 new teeth in progress! 2 on the upper side and 2 on the lower side, they have just appeared. I am a little shark ;).

Look, we are bragging again. For about 2 days now, Andrei started trying to say “ma-ma” (”mommy”, in Romanian)!

He still doesn’t get it very correctly, but the intention is very clear, he is trying to imitate the sounds we are making. Sometimes, it’s “ma-ma”, sometimes “ua-ua”, but you agree it’s a good thing that he’s trying, right?

And now, that he got the “kissing skills”, he is practicing hard, so me and Dragos are being kissed all the time.

Andrei kisses you all.

I am doing great things! I learnt how to kiss mommy and daddy!!! Let me tell you about it.

Several days ago, I realized that our baby has no idea how to kiss, even though he is being kissed all the time, obviously. So, I decided that, everytime I give him a little kiss (and believe me I manage to find lots of opportunities through the day), I will tell him “Pup!”, whuch means “Kiss!” in Romanian, hoping that, someday, he will realize what it means.

Guess what! He actually got it! And it was really fast, I wasn’t expecting that. Well, he doesn’t yet know how to do it properly, but he got the idea.

So, now, I tell him “Do you give a little kiss?” and His-Sweetness comes closer to me and puts his sweet little mouth on my cheeck or, sometimes, if he really likes me at the moment, I actually might get a little delicate tongue..

What ca I say, I am really happy about this! Now, Dragos and I are kissing him even more, even synchronized. And it makes him sooo happy.

I have studied the growth charts.

Yupppiiii! He is very close to the average length for his age! The average is of 82 cm and he is 80 cm long. He is “a little” too fat, though. Hi hi. I know, I know, it’s not good that he is fat, don’t shoot me. This is what happens when he cannot regulate himself, what can we do about it. Before, he was too thin, now, he is too fat…

We have reached 80 cm in length and we are cvery proud. I am now going to check in the growth chart how much he is supposed to actually have at his age, but, no matter what they say, we are very pleased.

Several days ago, we have ordered a new baby-bed and today we received it. I can’t wait for it to be in place tomorrow (now, Buflitzel is sleeping, like a sweet, nice little boy he is. I hope he likes it. We had to make this stept because his current bed is 100 cm long and he almost doesn’t fit in it anymore.

About eating, we have made some slight progress. I managed, the past days, to always give him a little of what I eat to taste, and today he actually ate a little (very little, don’t imagine anything big, but it’s an important progress) out of a bottle with banana and apple. And he didn’t spit everywhere, which is very good.

We still haven’t received any news from the US. We know Dr Foker is really busy right now, he is traveling through Europe and operating children with esophageal atresia using his method and he is trying to teach other surgeons how to apply it. Lately, he obtained a practice license for operating in UK and, until the end of this month, two babies from Romania will be operated by him in Leipzig, Germany.

So, we maintain our patience,and we hope he will find some time to answer us between two travels. If he still hasn’t answered for a long while, we will try again to reach him through our surgeon in Bremen.

As soon as we will find out something, we will post the information on the website.